Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "geven" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce geven in Dutch?

geven is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈɣeːvə(n)/. It means “to give.” KHAY-vuh — rasping g at the front, long "ay," and a properly voiced v in the middle.

KHAY-vuh — rasping g at the front, long "ay," and a properly voiced v in the middle.

geven /ˈɣeːvə(n)/

This verb illustrates how Dutch stress protects vowel quality: GEE- keeps its long vowel because it is stressed and sits in an open syllable, while the ending collapses to nothing. Move the accent and the whole word would be unrecognisable.

Listen: geven

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

g Sustained velar friction. At the start of a word it may carry a little voicing in the north, but the scrape is what matters, not the buzz.

e Stretched by the open syllable, and the only full vowel in the word. Everything after it is a mumble.

v Between two vowels the v is fully voiced, unlike the half-devoiced v at the start of a Dutch word. Here it really does buzz.

en In the past participle "gegeven" this same ending reappears at the end of a longer word, still reduced, still with the n gone.

Hear it in a sentence

Kun je me het zout geven?

Can you give me the salt?

Listen: Kun je me het zout geven?

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Kun je me het zout geven?" stacks two object pronouns before the noun and sends the infinitive to the very end — a word order that feels backwards to English speakers, who would say "give me the salt." The unstressed "me het" in the middle flattens almost to "muh-ut."

Where English speakers slip

English "give" hovers over this verb and supplies a hard g nine times out of ten, because the words look and mean nearly the same thing. Dutch needs the fricative. The vowel is the second casualty: "give" has a short i, while Dutch has a long "ay," so the two words share almost no sounds despite sharing an ancestor.